Yale’s newest institute probes social and scientific networks

New Haven >> A new Yale University program will study the basic tenets of networks, from mathematics to molecules to mobs.

The Yale Institute for Network Science, launched Wednesday, will take a multi-pronged approach to understanding seemingly random patterns and isolated phenomena. It will gather biologists, physicists, social scientists and others to search for answers.

“Specialization is seeing diminishing returns,” said Nicholas Christakis, co-director of the institute and the Sol Goldman Family professor of social and natural science.

Science has spent the past century breaking the world down to its component parts, all the way to the subatomic level, Christakis explained.

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“Scientists are now struggling with how to put the parts back together again,” he said. “Network science is part of this assembly project of modern science.”

What does that mean? It means studying social networks to create new crime prevention programs. It means finding innovative ways to produce new medicines, reduce voter apathy and fight the spread of epidemics. It means collaboration among an array of academic disciplines.

“This is key to all we’re trying to do at Yale,” said university provost Benjamin Polak, who noted Yale President Peter Salovey is particularly interested in fostering innovation on campus. “This is one of the examples we’re most excited about and most worried about. It’s got to work.”

The new institute will operate on the third floor of a building on Hillhouse Avenue. At the outset, it will include nine resident faculty members and more than two-dozen affiliated faculty members, plus students and faculty interested in specific projects.

The program came together less than two years after a group of Yale faculty members began researching the notion of bringing multiple disciplines under one roof to study networks.

“I initially envisioned five or 10 of us sitting in a room somewhere,” said co-director Daniel Spielman, the Henry Ford II professor of computer science and mathematics. “But no. There are 50 of us and we’re going to need a pretty big room.”

There will be economists, engineers, computer scientists, psychologists and public health experts involved, as well.

Christakis said Yale is one of only a handful of schools around the country with a dedicated network science institute. It comes at an opportune time, when computational power and massive databases exist to make more research possible.

Meanwhile, networks have become second nature to a new generation of students who embrace metrics.

“Telecommunications and online social networks are what they grew up with,” Christakis said. “They already think of themselves as embedded in a larger group.”

Yale freshman David Liu certainly liked Christakis’ idea.

“I love the way he described science as breaking things down to the most basic elements and now we’re putting them back together,” Liu said. “My friends and I are very aware of these networks around us.”

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